


for these are my mountains

by dilkirani



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bus era, F/M, Mild Angst, but fitzsimmons will get their happy ending, fitzsimmonssecretsanta, future fluffiness, s7 spec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22030648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/pseuds/dilkirani
Summary: Written for FitzSimmons Secret Santa 2019 - prompt: fitzsimmons looking for/finding a beautiful view (mountains/ocean/space/etc.)For these are my mountains and this is my glenThe braes of my childhood will know me againNo land's ever claimed me tho' far I did roamFor these are my mountains and I'm going home- traditional song
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	for these are my mountains

**Author's Note:**

> For shes-an-oddbird on Tumblr! Merry belated Christmas and happy almost New Year! I loved working on your gift, and I hope you enjoy it!

“It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?” she says, gesturing with the ICER held firmly, if a bit awkwardly, in her hands, as if she’s projecting more confidence than she feels in wielding the weapon. Fitz glances her way briefly, barely taking in the sunrise that’s haloing behind her. He supposes she’s right, but the anxiety of being out in the field again, even if they’re allegedly far from any real danger, is causing his chest to tighten. Or perhaps it’s this new anxiety of being so close to her, now that he knows. The condensation from her exhalation shimmers in front of his face. She is always much too close to him.

Simmons leans against a tree, catching her breath as they wait for word from the others. “Have you ever ‘bagged a munro,’ as they say?” 

He snorts. “A munro is a mountain that’s at least 3,000 feet.”

She rolls her eyes inelegantly, and his heart constricts. _I need to see a doctor_ , he thinks. A real doctor, not Simmons picking up the slack because no one seems to know the difference between a double Ph.D. and an M.D. Simmons says his bloodwork is fine, but his blood doesn’t feel fine; it moves through his veins like sludge every time she crowds his personal space. 

“I know what it means, Fitz,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to climb at least one. The views are stunning. Or, it seems so from the pictures at least. You never have?”

“‘Course not, Simmons. Three thousand bloody feet! Who has the time or energy for that?” What he doesn’t tell her is his dad had promised, during one of his rare good moods, to take him. He’d shown Fitz photographs from atop Ben Nevis and told him someday they’d go together. That was Before. In the After, Fitz had no desire to trudge up a mountain. He’d had no one to go with, anyway. 

“Let’s go together,” she suggests, as if she’s inviting him over for tea later. “Next time we have leave, after we visit our families. We can pick one of the smaller ones.”

Fitz stares at her, unsure if she’s serious. She’s never seemed particularly outdoorsy to him. “I don’t think we’re fit enough,” he finally responds.

“Well, we can train, can’t we? We have exercise facilities. Plus I think we’ve both gotten quite strong, being in the field.”

“We’re barely in the field,” he grumbles.

“We’re in the field right now! We just climbed a mountain, and the view is beautiful.” She sweeps her arm out, encompassing the sweet-smelling pines, the pinks and oranges of the rising sun, the light snow swirling like glitter around them. Still, he can’t take his eyes off of her.

“This is really more of a hill,” he counters. “We barely climbed 300 feet. And we’ll never get leave anyway. Haven’t seen my mum in ages.” Trip could bag a munro, the worst part of himself thinks. She’d probably rather go with Trip.

Simmons looks hurt, more hurt than he’d expected, considering she hardly ever takes his grumpiness personally. “We don’t have to if you’d rather not,” she shrugs with a nonchalance he immediately recognizes as fake. “Only, I don’t know...I always thought we would someday.”

“FitzSimmons,” Coulson barks through their comms. “We’re done here. Head back to the rendezvous.”

“Copy that, sir,” Simmons chirps, holstering her ICER and starting down the slope without even looking at him. 

Fitz stumbles after her, trying to keep up with her brisk pace. He should apologize, he knows. Not just for dismissing her, but for everything. For keeping her at a distance to protect his own heart. The words stick to the roof of his mouth.

She doesn’t talk to him as they plod onto the quinjet, but she does pause for a moment to look back at the mountains, and he follows her gaze. It really is stunning. Sometimes, he needs to see things through her to remember how beautiful the world can be.

“Ben Lomond,” he says quietly, as he buckles himself into the seat next to her.

“What?” Her eyes flicker up towards him and then quickly away.

“Ben Lomond. It’s supposed to be one of the easier ones. A clear path and a more gradual rise to the summit. Plus it’s close to Glasgow so we could stay with my mum. She keeps asking when you’ll come to visit again.” He gives her a soft smile, as much of an apology as he can provide without giving too much away. “We can work our way up to the harder ones.”

She grins widely, like he’s fashioned her a brand new state-of-the-art microscope, and rests her head on his shoulder. They had, after all, had to wake up at three in the morning to prepare for the mission.

“I hope we can go next year,” she sighs. With everything that’s been going on, he doesn’t know how likely that is, but he likes the way her optimism feels against his skin. 

“Did you really always think we’d climb a _mountain_ together one day?” he asks after a few minutes have passed in silence. He’s been replaying her words and finds he doesn’t quite understand them. He feels like he’s standing on the precipice of some truth larger than himself, but he’s afraid to look over the edge. 

Her breathing has slowed and the way she’s melted against him makes him think she’s asleep. Maybe she’s getting there, because she murmurs, “I’ve always thought about—” but she doesn’t finish. And so he doesn’t say what he wants to say either. 

++

They don’t go the next year. They don’t go for many, many years after that.

++

She brings it up one day over a lazy breakfast, when his mum has gone out to pick up more ingredients for dinner. His mother has been coddling them and making all their old favorites. She has asked them about everything except how long they’ll be staying. 

“The nights are so short right now,” Jemma says, popping a piece of scone into her mouth. She looks simultaneously weary and optimistically young, and it cracks his heart a bit. “I was doing some light research, and someone suggested camping out on the mountain. That way you can be there for the sunset and sunrise, and you don’t have to climb in the dark.”

He never would have agreed if she’d suggested this at the Academy. Hell, she never would have suggested it back at the Academy. But both of them have since survived much worse than a few hours in an uncomfortable sleeping bag. 

“We have time,” she reminds him, as if anticipating his argument. “We have more time than we realize.” Or maybe it’s that time no longer works for them the way it works for other people. He leans over and kisses her, tasting jam and tea and Jemma.

“Okay,” he agrees. “We have time. Let's do at least one thing for ourselves.”

And his muscles complain, loudly, as they hike, but he doesn’t. Not once. They have worked too hard for these moments together. Someday they will go back and inject more separation into their past, but for now he cares less about quantifying time and more about how her hand fits into his as it always has, as it always will.

He wakes in the morning curled around her, stiff and sore and lightheaded more from her proximity than the altitude. _This morning existed and exists and will continue to exist,_ he thinks. 

They find a nice spot for the sunrise; he leans against a boulder, and she leans back in his arms. It’s spectacular—stunning—he doesn’t have the words for it, really. He thinks of all the places he’s been, the worlds no human has traveled to, and how none of that compares to this view with this woman. He holds her more tightly, tethering her to him, and places a kiss to her cheek, tasting salt.

“Oh, Jemma,” he whispers. “Love, what’s the matter?”

She laughs, shaking her head. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m so happy.” She slides her fingers through his, spinning his wedding ring slowly around. He has no way of knowing if this was something she did before, but it comforts her now and so he doesn’t question it.

“For the longest time, I was afraid to miss a sunrise. Like if I didn’t see it happening myself, I couldn’t prove the sun would actually rise again. It was...it felt like a physical _need_. But it eventually faded. Maybe time really does heal all wounds.”

He hopes it does. He hopes more than anything that of all the ways time has betrayed him, this is not one of them.

Jemma turns to face him, the sun bright enough to cast her face in shadow, and kisses him softly. “But this is still my favorite thing in the world. To watch the sun rise with you.”

He kisses her back, memorizing the press of her lips to his, the warmth of the sun on his face, dissipating the chill in the air. “We won’t erase this,” he promises, as if it's ever been in their control. “We will always be here, together.” 

++

When Fitz settles down, he goes all the way. He tidies up every day and spends time picking out the best-looking produce at the local, organic market. He experiments as much with home improvement projects as he does with building new tech in their lab. They’re consultants now, in the parlance of the time. They’re still saving the world, but they have something called a “work/life balance,” and it’s truly the happiest he’s ever been. He’d never been as keen for adventure as Jemma had, but he’d also never imagined he could be this content puttering around the house, drinking endless cups of tea with Jemma as they discuss the latest request from Daisy, falling asleep in front of the telly because nowadays they prefer to be in bed by ten. It’s the kind of life his peers would describe as boring, but he’s fiercely protective of it. They’ve earned boring, and they’ve earned a life where time follows a certain prescribed order.

Which is why, after they’ve spent the night hiking up Ben Hope, torches the only illumination to guide them, he is heartbroken for Jemma when the light finally breaks on a perfectly foggy day. They’d come all this way and could barely make out more than each other’s faces in the mist. 

“Bloody Scottish weather,” he grouses. “I’m sorry, love. We can try again someday.” 

She turns to face him and, to his surprise, laughs. “It’s okay,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But you’ve been planning this trip for weeks. Checking off the most northerly munro. And we can’t see a bloody thing.”

Jemma throws her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his. He can feel her grin against his face. “I can see you,” she says. “What more beautiful view is there?”

“You see me every day,” he reminds her, settling his hands at her hips and placing a kiss to her forehead.

She steps back and regards him, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “I was trying to be romantic, I guess, but I should know by now to leave that to you. I was thinking about when we first talked about climbing a munro, and how I didn’t realize then how I felt about you, just that I needed you in my life forever. And how the last time we were so in love but our future wasn’t secure, and we didn’t know—but we did it. We saved the world, and now we’ve created the most wonderful life for ourselves, and I don’t know...I guess I just wanted to show you—” She throws an arm out, but whatever she’s wanted to show him is obscured in the mist.

He smiles indulgently. “That was a lovely speech. Are you proposing again?”

Jemma laughs again, the sound bubbling out of her like she just can’t contain it. “Ugh, Fitz,” she says, with absolutely no bite. “No. I’m pregnant.”

Fitz gapes at her, completely thrown. It’s not that they hadn’t planned for children, but it had never happened. He hadn’t realized until just this moment how much he’d been desperately hoping for this news. He reaches for her without speaking, slotting his mouth against hers and kissing her greedily.

“I love you,” he says in between breaths. “I love you so much.”

And she’s right, in the end. He can see her, silhouetted in front of him, and it’s the most beautiful view in the universe. 

  
  



End file.
